Work on My F8, No. 11

[Jim Price]

This week's work entailed a major milestone in the F 8 resto project. We accomplished the following:

Bolted the transmission to the engine and installed same on the frame.

Installed the carbuerator, alternator, distributor, starter solenoid, spark plugs and wires, coil and fuel pump.

Installed the transmission cooler.

Whoa! Installed what? Well, here's the rest of the story. For those of you who were aghast at my scrapping the bed right off, converting to a 12 volt system and installing an electronic distributor, hang onto your seats!

I am a paraplegic having contracted polio some years back while working as a civilian for the US Air Force. I use a wheelchair to get around and use hand controls to drive my vehicles.

When I purchased this truck I was struck by the very narrow space for the foot pedals and wanting to not only drive the truck myself as well as others not needing hand controls, I decided to install a converter and an automatic transmission.

I purchased a Flat-O-Matic converter which comes with a bell housing that fits the rear of the flathead as well as the front of a Ford C 4 auto tranny. It also comes with a new light-weight flywheel and torque converter. I picked up a C 4, had it rebuilt, and this week we bolted engine and tranny together, painted and installed them.

Bolting the tranny to the frame required having a 5" by 8" by 3/16" steel plate cut and holes drilled as the new mounting holes were located about 3" beyond the originals in the cross member.

We have also ordered a custom length driveshaft as well as a transmission top mounted shifter (Lokar). On the latter I believe that we may be able to install the original shifting arm to maintain the original look. In that regard we also drilled and pinned the clutch pedal arm to the shaft that it shares with the brake pedal so that there are now two brake pedals.

I've kept all the original pieces so that any subsequent owner may use them to retro-convert if they so wish.

Well, that's the rest of the story! You may fire away at will!

Attached are a number of pictures of the work we accomplished. Enjoy!

Regards,
Jim

PS The last picture shows how little space there is between the pedal assembly and the exhaust manifold! I'm really concerned about the space available and whether all will fit!

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Originally Posted by Jim Price

I am a paraplegic having contracted polio some years back while working as a civilian for the US Air Force. I use a wheelchair to get around and use hand controls to drive my vehicles.

When I purchased this truck I was struck by the very narrow space for the foot pedals and wanting to not only drive the truck myself as well as others not needing hand controls, I decided to install a converter and an automatic transmission.

Jim,

I like the early CMPs, but am concerned about squeezing my 6'6" frame and size 13 boots inside the cab. But this is nothing compared to your handicap. I commend you for your determination to drive a CMP truck!

Hanno

[Jim Price]

Hanno:
Thanks for your kind words! Forgot to mention that I'm 6'5" tall and darn near have to use a shoe horn to fit into my Kubel. Well, not quite but you get the picture!
Regards,
Jim

[Chuck Anderson]

The way I see it, there's one more F8 back on the road because of you. Its only right that you've made it possible for you to be the one driving it!

[Jim Price]

Thanks for the support on the deviations from original on my truck; hoped you all would understand! Thanks especially to Hanno and Chuck for your very kind words!

Was somewhat busy this past week. The weather has turned nice with the temp hovering right around 100 F, a great aid in working outside!

We accomplished the following:

Installed the floor temporarily to see what our tolerances were for all the engine and tranny parts.

Installed the new drive shaft.

Cut and tack-welded the frame for the bed. We were using 110 and Bob took the frame out to his house to complete the welding with his 220 welder.

Bent and adjusted the new shifting lever to fit the internal; body panel. Had to do a bit of cutting on the opening but it's covered by the rubber boot. (Although I had hoped to use the original shifting arm, because of the shifting traverse space required will not be able to do so.)

Placed the 5" channel on the bumper frames after doing a bit of grinding to get them to fit inside the channel. Need a couple of bands and four "U" bolts made for the brush guard. I'm having these made on Monday.

Turned the truck around in preparation to running some water through the engine to do some flushing. Discovered that one of the tires has gone flat and will need to be dismounted and checked to see if a new tube is warranted. : (Will add the two lug nuts I was missing; purchased a couple of replacements and they arrived today.)

Stopped by the painter and picked up all of the outside engine compartment body parts. He showed me one of the doors which had to have both the inside and outside skins replaced; he's done a great job! After revisiting the door ordered some replacement door handles from Macs.

Found that the air cleaner I recently purchased is too bit for the space as it intrudes into the underside of the control panel box! Am watching a couple of potential replacements on eBay.

Purchased another fan on eBay after finding that the tapped holes in the alternator pulley don't match up with the fan I have! Hopefully the "new" one show up next week!

Searched eBay and found a set of manifolds, the right side having the lower profile. Am hopeful for success in the bidding!

Some aggravations but some progress!

Regards,
Jim

[king of obsolete]

jim, keep up the the good work and keep this thread going because you have "lots" of info which others can use done the road. also i like the trans so you can drive the cmp when you are finished. being colour blind i don't let that set me back. i have worn pink thinking it is a grey with a smile on my face. i just laugh about it in the end.
also i like the fact you are not cheaping out on the repairs, you are spending your money wisely.

thansk
KoO
Published Author

[Jim Price]

Work was limited to three days this week as I had a dental appointment on Monday; broke a portion of a tooth off and am having a silver crown put in. (Couldn't afford a gold one as I've spent my discretionary funds on the truck...... )

In any case a fair number of tasks were completed:

Bob finished welding the bed frame at his home where he's got a 220 MIG welder. He also sanded down the welds before returning the frame to my place.

Cleaned and painted the windshield wiper motors. The grease inside the chamber had solidified and the vacuum "paddles" were stuck.

Welded the frame to the bottom of the bed and, after cooling, bolted it to the frame. (As you may recall, the original bed was beyond saving so I had new bed pieces made up at a local steel fabricator.)

Made up a set of spacers to go in between the base of the brush guard spring "legs" and the inside of the 5" channel bumper. We made these from 1 1/2" heavy wall square pipe, using 1/4" flat bar to seal off the top and provide the "step" for the bottom of the "legs" to rest on. Drilled a 1/2" hole to provide for the bolt heads that hold the individual springs together. We used Allen head bolts to reduce the size of the hole as they will be hidden by the spacer.

Had a set of "U" bolts made up to affix the guard to the back of the bumper. We then put it all together to check for fit and then disassembled it to take to the stripper and painter.

Got some neighborhood help to lift and set the sides of the bed in place and then clamped them to the bottom in preparation for welding both in place on Monday. By the way, when we cut the cross pieces for the bed frame we left the pieces that bolt to the truck frame just a bit long. This enabled us to rest the bottom of the side pieces of the bed on these slight extensions making the job of clamping them on straight a certainty.

Pushed the truck into the driveway where it slopes down to the street and stuck the garden hose in it and did some flushing of each side of the engine. Although the use of air pressure did blow the vast majority of the sediment out, more did come with the water treatment. We'll do the same with a flush when we've installed the radiator and run the engine for a short time.

The fan arrived and I was successful in having the winning bid for the replacement manifold. I expect it'll be here some time this coming week and we can get back to working on getting the engine started. We still need to alter the exhaust pipes, purchase a muffler and install the exhaust system.

Today I stopped by a local specialty lumber store and had the pieces for the gas tanks support cut. They were cut from ash wood, a common wood used in early automobiles here in the US. The top planks are 1" by 6" and the bottom plank is 1 7/8" by 8". More to follow on this task in the near future.

That's it for now!

Regards,
Jim

[Ledsel]

I was just looking at your photos of the rear tranny mount and I see you have it mounted solid . You must have a rubber mount there as the engine twists in the frame. You will break your rear mount pad on the tranny if you don't.It should be made the same as the original auto trans mount. Just thought I would save you more grief.

Originally Posted by Jim Price

Bolted the transmission to the engine and installed same on the frame.

[Jim Price]

Ledsel:
Based on your post I've reconsidered the manner in which the tranny is bolted to the frame. Although we used the original bolt holes which were lined with rubber, we are going to switch out the metal spacers we added to the plate and replace them with a pair of hard rubber bushings. We definitely lost rack of the fact we were dealing with an aluminum housing not a cast iron one!

Thanks for your recommedation!

Regards,
Jim

[Ledsel]

Don't forget to put a rubber on each side of the plate. It has to be able to have movement both ways. Good luck.

[Jim Price]

Ledsel:
Thanks for the clarification! Will do!

Regards,
Jim

[Jim Price]

This was another short week being that Bob, my helper, was out on Monday. However, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday saw some accomplishment.

On Tuesday, we picked up the sheet steel, 14 guage, for the front panel for the bed, stopped to have a look at the engine I'm considering buying, and stopped at the hardware store for yet another expenditure for nuts and bolts.

The remaining two days we:

Installed the front panel to the bed. We drilled some twenty-plus holes for the bolts and then put 'er together. Looks good! We did deviate from the original when having the bed walls made in that we did not incorporate the outside "step" that was located around the outside about 2" below each of the three sides chosing instead to wrap them outside with 1" by 2" square pipe even with the top. We felt that this would better protect any riders from the original 1/4" wide edge plus give them a must better hand-hold.

Added the salvaged pieces to the new tailgate and installed it. We had been able to save the outside strapping, one of the closure hooks (The other was missing and Bob is fabricating another one which will match the original.) and the step which is located inside the tailgate. Didn't have the capacity to rivet it all together as originally done so bolted all together.

We must have either been very careful or very lucky as we had very little variance occur when fitting all these parts together. Things were really squared up!

That's it for now!

Regards,
Jim

[Alex van de Wetering]

Excellent work! It's good to see your 8cwt retained the step on the rear panel. My C8 also has it, but there is no movement whatsoever.

regards,

Alex

[Jim Price]

This has been a busy week! We accomplished the following:

Removed the damaged engine and pulled the transmission. The tranny is fine and will be reinstalled. Legal work on the damaged engine is proceeding.

Installed the copy of the tailgate hook that Bob, my welder, had made. See the picture of it and compare with the original shown in a previous posting; an excellent copy!

A second piece of bad news! The master cylinder began to lose fluid early last week and continued until it lost it all. Removed it and am returning it to the shop next week. It was a new one, too, not a re-build!

Installed the wood plank (ash) upon which the gas tanks rest. This involved the use of a router to make a pair of channels for the steel hold-down strap. It was also necessary to rout out a 1/2" by 3" by 5"space for the drain plug area. (Please, no criticism on the preciseness of the cuts: we are metal workers not carpenters! ) We also cut to shape, using a jig saw, the spacers for the top planks that cover the tanks. Holes for the drain plug access as well as the gas cap and emergency tank switch will be made next week.

When inspecting the original bed we noticed that the three vertical straps on each side of the bed did not continue under the bed to the opposite side but stopped at the bottom edge of bed. Sooo, we cut to fit 9 pieces of strap for each side, drilled holes in them and plug-welded them to the sides of the bed. We had noted the spacing measurements on the original beed so that the new bed would look the same. (Forgot to take pictures of these but will do so in a future posting.)

Welded a 3/8" thick by 2" piece of strap along the top of the front panel of the bed so that the profile matched the original configuration. We did cut a diagonal clip off of each corner as well.

Hauled the bed out to Bob's house for finishing off of all the plug and tack welds. Bob has been using a lightweight welder and wanted to finish all off using the heavy-duty one he has at home. Both are MIG welders. He'll also sand the finished welds. Pictures to follow in a future post.

That's it for this time!

Regards,
Jim